Euripides, who lived in the fourth century
B.C., is considered the most modern of the Greek tragic playwrights.
He is admired for his biting social criticism, profound psychological
insights and the humanity of his characters. Even though she
is a barbarian and a witch who kills a whole slew of people including
her own sons, his "Medea" is an extremely human, sometimes
likeable woman.
In the Abbey Theatre’s production, on stage at the Brooklyn Academy
of Music’s Harvey Theater until Oct. 12 as part of their Next
Wave Festival, "Medea" seems just like your next-door
neighbor, an interpretation that comes mostly from director Deborah
Warner and her starring actress Fiona Shaw.
Warner and Shaw have previously collaborated on seven projects,
including "Electra" in 1988, a cross-gender version
of Shakespeare’s "Richard II" (with Shaw as the king)
in 1995, and a one-woman performance of T.S. Eliot’s "The
Wasteland" in 1996.
The two women have also achieved considerable success apart:
Shaw played Harry Potter’s awful Aunt Petunia in "Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone," and Warner has directed
several operas in England, such as "Wozzeck," "Don
Giovanni" and "Jeanne d’Arc au Bucher," as well
as several performance installations.
But it is Warner and Shaw’s work together that seems particularly
fruitful.
Using Kenneth McLeish and Frederic Raphael’s translation, and
Tom Pye’s minimalist set, which transforms ancient Corinth into
a white-brick backyard with glass doors and walls behind a shallow
pool, Warner has turned Euripides’ classic tale of passion, pride
and revenge into a modern story of passion, pride and revenge.
Even before Medea appears in all her anguish, the family nanny
(Siobhan McCarthy) stumbles through the glass doors wailing over
Jason’s infidelity to his wife, and Medea’s deteriorating state
of mind. She rushes about trying to find a place to hide the
family’s knives. (Talk about foreshadowing.)
The children’s tutor (Robin Laing) runs down the theater’s steps
and onto the stage and delivers the news that Medea’s problems
have just begun: Kreon, king of Corinth, has ordered Medea and
her sons banished.
Soon the chorus – modern stereotypes including an office worker,
a housewife and a New Age devotee – enter, counseling calm and
reason.
Throughout, Medea’s cries and wails can be heard from some undisclosed
place under the stage. But when Medea enters, she is no raving
lunatic with wild hair and bloodshot eyes. Shaw is sedate and
quiet. She wears a simple dress and sweater. At first she appears
a bit awkward, almost apologetic.
"Ladies," she says to the chorus, "don’t think
ill of me."
It’s almost impossible to describe the extent of Shaw’s triumph
in the role. Her body language, gestures and tone range from
determined to deranged, sarcastic to suicidal, mild to murderous.
She snarls, spits, stumbles, smiles, caresses and kills.
Jason (Jonathan Cake), when he finally appears to defend his
actions, comes running into the yard wearing a jogging suit and
sneakers. He claims he wants to marry Kreon’s daughter only because
it will ensure his status in Corinth and provide sons to protect
the sons he has with Medea.
Medea doesn’t believe Jason, and neither does the audience.
Cake casts a powerfully ambivalent figure as the duplicitous
Jason – an arrogant Greek who feels superior to the woman he
has taken from the boondocks and introduced to civilization.
But he is also a man who grieves deeply.
He accomplishes the difficult task of making the vain, ambitious,
adulterous Greek sympathetic.
But the real strength in this production is not the bursts of
passion, the splashes of blood and the bloodcurdling screams
– although there’s plenty of that too – but in the very ordinariness
of characters to whom we can all relate.
Who knows what turns a loving mother into a murderess? Warner’s
interpretation minimizes the role of the gods. There is no divine
intervention in the end, and the gods play a marginal role in
the characters’ motivation.
Warner and Shaw seem to be telling a modern audience that has
witnessed countless murders and calls for revenge a troubling
truth: None of us is very far from the passions that provoked
Medea. She wears our clothes and our face. She lives next door
to us.
"Medea" plays through Oct.
12 at 7:30 pm, with an additional, 2 pm matinee on Oct. 12, at
the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St.).
Tickets are $25, $45 and $65. For tickets, call (718) 636-4100
or visit www.bam.org on the Web.